This digital edition of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is formatted for proper display and checked for typos.
In 1921, We became the first work banned by the Soviet censorship board. Ultimately, Yevgeny Zamyatin arranged for We to be smuggled to the West for publication. The subsequent outrage this sparked within the Party and the Union of Soviet Writers led directly to Zamyatin's successful request for exile from his homeland.
We is set in a glass city of the future, where secret police and spies inform on and supervise the public with ease. Here life is organized to promote maximum productive efficiency and monolithic conformity; people march in step with each other and wear identical clothing. There is no way of referring to people except their given numbers. Males have odd numbers prefixed by consonants; females have even numbers prefixed by vowels. The story follows a man called D-503, who dangerously begins to veer from the ‘norms’ of society after meeting I-330, a woman who defies the rules. D-503 soon finds himself caught up in a secret plan to destroy OneState and liberate the city.
Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. We was his most prominent work. Despite having been a prominent Old Bolshevik, Zamyatin was deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the CPSU following the October Revolution. Due to his use of literature to criticize Soviet society, Zamyatin has been referred to as one of the first Soviet dissidents.
